"Can You Pick Us Up?"

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​"Can You Pick Us Up?"

...Continued from previous post (https://www.ailantha.com/blog/my-covid-christmas-or-my-christmas-of-magical-thinking-and-the-cookies-that-saved-christmas​):
      I once saw a thought-provoking movie called "What the #$*! Do We Know?" that propounded, among other things, that when we see something we don't expect to see the image doesn't immediately register because our perceptions are so heavily influenced by our expectations that when our brains are hit with some unexpected data they need a moment to figure out what to do with it.

        My brain had just such a What the #$*! moment when at 9:30 pm on Christmas Eve I saw the email from my daughter with the subject line "Can you pick us up?" and only this for the message:

​        Soon as my cerebral neurons regrouped and I recovered from my drop-jawed astonishment I let out a joyful whoop then called my daughter to let her know that, hecks yes, we could pick them up!     
         As it turned out, my Los Angeles daughter's cold was much better, my grand daughters were begging to go to Ohio for Christmas and, considering that I was now COVID-free and feeling fine, my daughter made the command decision on Christmas Eve night that the family would catch the first available flight from Los Angeles to Columbus, Ohio. The first flight she found was on December 26.
       "We thought about just showing up at the door and surprising you," my daughter told me when I called her, "but we know that you hate surprises."
         It's true that I generally hate most surprises. But I was overjoyed with this one.  
         I immediately called my Chicago daughter, Claire,

...to ask if there was any way that she, too, could come home for a few days. Sadly, that wasn't possible for her, as she had rescheduled herself to work at the hospital on the days of her cancelled Columbus trip.
           My local daughter, Theresa,  - who was equally thrilled that at least one of her sisters, and eventually her brother, would be here for the holidays - and I immediately got to work and stayed up late Christmas Eve wrapping the presents we'd bought for my grand daughters. (Frankly, I wasn't sure what we were going to do with those presents when we learned the children wouldn't be coming. Would it be feasible, I wondered to ship all those containers of slime?).

        Our Christmas day plans likewise changed. Instead of Tom, Theresa, and I having a big Christmas breakfast then later going out for Christmas dinner then driving downtown to look at the holiday lights along the river, we hit the ground running on Christmas morning and spent the day making up the beds and cleaning and straightening the house (though I don't know why I always feel compelled to bother with the cleaning and straightening, 

...when soon enough after everyone's arrival the house invariably devolves into a happy mess). 

     Theresa also set up an art table in the basement for the girls and, upon discovering that our neighborhood CVS was open on Christmas day, zipped out and bought lots of stocking-stuffers for them and two more gingerbread house kits to replace the ones I bought then gave away (see previous post, https://www.ailantha.com/blog/my-covid-christmas-or-my-christmas-of-magical-thinking-and-the-cookies-that-saved-christmas).
          And then finally on the next afternoon, December 26, Christmas arrived.